


sunlight in the pit

by fensandmarshes



Category: Dream SMP (Video Blogging RPF)
Genre: (except it's more complex than that of course), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence from November 16th (Dream SMP), Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Angst and Feels, Character Study, Gen, I Reveal My Inner L'Manberg-The-Country Anti, Male-Female Friendship, Niki | Nihachu-centric, Relationship Study, Villain Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot Angst, Wilbur Soot-centric, this sure is ... An Interpretation of c!wilbur's motivations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29605209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fensandmarshes/pseuds/fensandmarshes
Summary: Niki stands, torn between the fear freezing her in place and the urge to dart forwards and be kind and loving andhelp,as her best friend paces in front of a button in a cave littered with words carved in Wilbur’s own hand. He’s muttering to himself.She says, gently horrified, “Will.”Or: November 16th, and the button room. But instead of Phil, it's Niki. This changes some things, but not others.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 105





	sunlight in the pit

**Author's Note:**

> \- i have [a thread on twitter expanding on my boundaries wrt my rpf fics](https://twitter.com/fensandmarshes/status/1358885966878920704), but suffice it to say: this is a dsmp!verse fic, and i don't care about it being shared anywhere! all characterisations are based 100% off of the roleplay characters rather than the irl ccs.  
> \- thank you to [supinetothestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars) for the cheerleading and love!! you own my heart  
> \- listen i just have so much niki nihachu brainrot.

Their victory is unravelling at the seams, and Niki stands frozen. Technoblade’s fireworks are scattered across the sky and the podium. The air is writhing with shouts. Niki stands amidst it all, and even in her new netherite armour that doesn’t quite fit she is certain she is going to die. Her pulse rabbits in her ears, and another boom thunders through the chairs facing the podium, and she is certain L’Manberg is going to die with her.

_ It’s only right for a man to die with his country, _ Wilbur said once. It echoes in her ears. She is, as she’s mentioned, not a man - she pointed this out at the time, and Wilbur had corrected himself with a self-deprecatory smile - but she thinks it is appropriate, still. Will always had a sense for what was appropriate.

Fireworks shatter in the sky. Niki thinks of TNT, of Wilbur’s ramblings as she coaxed him out of a crevice in Pogtopia, and something shatters in her.

She cannot be right. She must not be right.

A suspicion has been sparked in her mind, all of a sudden, and drive flares in her like the spark has set her alight; she is a fuse and it makes her focus, makes her better. Now she can move again. She sprints for cover, the side of a building, and takes in the chaos with an analytical eye like Puffy once taught her; she picks apart the scene. Her communicator pings, and she glances at it - thunder slams into her chest like a battering ram when she sees the message.

Tubbo is dead. The fireworks are still going off.

Niki watches, and she is terrified and her hands are shaking and she almost drops her communicator - but something drives her to keep looking, forces her to play witness to L’Manberg’s slow motion death. This is the only reason it occurs to her, too late -

_ It’s only right for a country to die with its man, _ she thinks, her panic muddling the words -

She cannot see Wilbur anywhere.

She knows her best friend, even when she wishes she did not know exactly what he has gone to do.

It is this knowing that guides her to the room she should not know how to find, some long-unused understanding of Wilbur and his patterns and the ways he travels. It is this knowing that has drawn her to this doorway. It’s this knowing that is the reason she stands there, torn between the fear freezing her in place and the urge to dart forwards and be kind and loving and  _ help, _ as her best friend paces in front of a button in a cave littered with words carved in Wilbur’s own hand. He’s muttering to himself.

She says, gently horrified, “ _ Will. _ ”

He spins. For a moment, the whites of his eyes are fiercely bared, like a cornered, feral animal. She flinches, raising her shield in a useless half-aborted motion - he blinks. There are shadows yawning underneath his eyes.

“Niki?” he says quietly, as though he’s afraid to shatter the sudden silence.

She blinks, fiercely, past the pricking in her eyes. “Yes,” she says, raising her chin. She doesn’t know who she is here for. L’Manberg, the country that’s claimed her allegiance, her duty, her love? Is she here to defend it from her best friend? Is she here to save him?

“Uh,” Wilbur says. He seems - stunned. Terrified, but not for himself. Can’t meet her eyes; he looks away. “This,” he says, and she can see him swallow, searching for words, “isn’t … what it looks like.”

She feels as though she is shattering; it is important, she knows, to hold onto what she holds dear, in times like these. To remind herself that she fights for love, even as she breaks to see her best friend like this, all broken and shattered himself. “What is it, Wil,” she whispers, and tells herself,  _ L’Manberg does not deserve to be destroyed. I must fight for my country _ -

(She never fought for L’Manberg, always for  _ Wilbur, _ and L’Manberg was his dream and his love and she was just here for her friends -)

“Do you know what this button does,” Wilbur says, eyes darting around the room. He takes a step closer to her and then steps back again, jittery, aborted. “What it is.”

She swallows; rumours and whispers and Wilbur’s offhand comments that they all thought were jokes are suddenly falling into place, and the knowledge is glaring her in the face, screaming  _ why didn’t you see the cliff face sooner, why didn’t you drag me away from the edge, _ in Wilbur’s voice. “I do,” she says, and her voice breaks.

(Her grief - is not for L’Manberg. It is for the way that Wilbur loved it, the way that Wilbur was so passionate to build and live and be free, before L’Manberg was twisted sideways into something unrecognisable. She does not fight for L’Manberg any more, she realises - maybe she never did. But when they were all more whole, it was something she could have grown to love.)

Wilbur takes a deep breath, one that rattles in his chest. “Look,” he says, voice rough, and then he clears his throat but not his eyes, and they still have that half-feral light to them, “Niki, look! Look what I wrote on the walls,” and he’s crossing the room quicker than she can react, taking her hand, tugging her to the carving that breaks her heart. “Niki, it’s the anthem. A special place -”

“I know,” she says. His grip on her hand is vice-like, his knuckles white. “Will, you’re scaring me, please -”

“I was just saying,” he adds, a grin tugging at his lips as though he’s proud of himself, somehow, somewhere, “I made this big point, it was all poignant - it’s that there  _ was _ a special place, there  _ was _ -”

“There was,” Niki agrees, her own melancholy fighting through, and then she catches herself. “There  _ is, _ Will, it’s right there -”

“There’s  _ not _ -” She feels his grip tighten further, and fear leaps in her stomach the likes of which she has never, ever blamed on Wilbur, her best friend, and then he’s shoving her away and  _ shouting. _ The smile is gone. Tears are gathering in his eyes. His voice is low, raw, guttural in the way that comes from his chest. “Niki, I am always  _ so close _ to pressing this button,” he spits, as though it is torn from him, “Niki, I’ve - I have  _ been here, _ like - seven or eight times, Niki, seven or eight times I have  _ been here - _ ”

A distant explosion rattles the cave. Niki flinches. Wilbur curls in on himself, and then he’s muttering to himself, again, and crossing to the entrance, scrabbling at the rubble and blocking it off - claustrophobia presses down on Niki’s chest, but she pushes it away - “I don’t want them in here,” Wilbur seethes, low and furious, “I don’t  _ want _ them in here -”

Fireworks are going off. Niki can hear them, still. It’s like she is still in the world above, at the victory celebration that went wrong, and the sky is shattering above her. “Niki, they’re fighting _ , _ ” Wilbur snaps, like it’s something she’s done, like she had any choice what destruction L’Manberg rained upon them all -

(Well. This was Technoblade. And, if she thinks on it, this was Pogtopia - she does not like to think on the way they misled Techno, who she thought was quite nice, really, if you looked past all the blood on his hands and often on his clothes -)

“They’re  _ fighting, _ ” Wilbur repeats, incredulous.

Niki takes a deep breath. Tells herself to be strong. (Does not think on what she has done wrong by keeping her silence.) “And you want to just blow it all up,” she murmurs, as much to herself as to Wilbur - does she? Why does the statement not feel like fireworks shattering in her chest? Why does she not hate the thought of L’Manberg the country torn apart, when faced by this excruciatingly feral Wilbur who has been dragged into hell for it?

“I -” Wilbur’s face is pale. He hides it, runs a hand over it - “I do, I think I  _ do, _ ” he whispers, almost giddy, like he’s confessing a secret.

Niki swallows and, heart in her throat, crosses the room to take Wilbur’s hands into hers. “You fought so hard to take it back,” she implores him - she has to crane her neck to look into his eyes, but he looks away, still - “ _ we _ fought so hard, Will.”

Maybe something about the proximity changes him; maybe it is that she is gentle, or that he loves her still, remembers that they are friends, even through all of this. Whatever it is, he looks her straight in the eyes, the contact blistering. His eyes burn. “And for what,” he demands of her.

She blinks. “For L’Manberg.”

His face twists. “For  _ what, _ ” he repeats, and then he’s throwing away her hands, pacing again, gesturing - magnanimous - in the manner he would always adopt as he orated. “For L’Manberg? For  _ freedom? _ Niki, I lied to all of you - who the fuck needs L’Manberg? This was about a  _ drug van _ -”

“L’Manberg was about more than that,” Niki insists.

(What good has it done? What wrongs has it righted? Niki searches for them, cannot summon any to mind, and ignores that for the sake of the love she has invested into her nation.)

Wilbur scoffs. “That’s what I wanted you to think,” he snaps, and turns away to pull his coat tight about him. “I don’t know if this button even  _ works, _ Niki, I could - I  _ could press it, _ ” he whispers, suddenly conspiratorial, “and it might not even work.”

Niki feels slightly sick, like the world is a little bit out of alignment. Like she has shifted in some irrevocable way, understood something she wishes she did not understand. “Do you really want to take that risk, Will?” she entreats. 

The silence yawns between them, shattered by distant fireworks. From down here, at least, Niki cannot hear the dying screams as her friends fall one by one.

Wilbur swallows. Wets his lips. “There was a saying, Niki,” he tells her, voice startlingly gentle - almost like one of his few truly lucid moments, except that his eyes are still burning with contempt and fury that she does not understand. “You - you remember how we got rid of Eret, after he betrayed us.”

“I remember,” she agrees - something about his voice is different now, like he has made a decision, and she wonders, not daring to hope, if she is safe. “She was very - Will, what has this got to do with anything?”

Wilbur Soot looms over her, illuminated by the torch on the wall that casts dancing shadows over his dancing eyes. “There was a saying by a traitor, once,” he tells her, low, his voice teasing out and amplifying the natural iambic rhythm of his words (perfect pentameter, Niki will realise later; Shakespearean). He takes a step backwards, away from the entrance of the cave, and Niki follows him.

Tentative, nearly shaking with fear but stronger than it, Niki delivers her line: “What was it?”

“It was never meant to be,” Wilbur says, and takes another choreographed step backwards, and presses the button with no more fanfare than someone swatting a fly.

There is silence. The button clicks. Niki does not process what has happened for another tense frozen moment, like the pause before the conductor lowers their baton, and then she hears the hiss.

Wilbur lifts his hand in a salute, cocks his head with a half-wry grin. The world shatters.

It’s louder than anything she has ever heard.

This is what she focuses on, as L’Manberg plummets into hell beyond her; it is so loud. For the longest moment, stretched sadistically so that a second seems to last a minute, she can only hear the earth-shattering thunder of the TNT and her own heartbeat in her ears. Wilbur has not turned to look, and holds his salute even as the tremors rock their cave. He is shouting something. As the explosions grow more distant - tearing through the heart of L’Manberg - she begins to make out his words. 

“ _ My _ L’Manberg, Niki,” Wilbur is saying; she thinks her hands are shaking. Her heart is in her throat. The explosions are still going, distantly; her ears are ringing. Wilbur’s voice sounds as though it’s been ripped out of his throat, as though his vocal cords have been shattered by eleven and a half stacks of TNT; when she can hear what he’s saying again, she flinches. “-  _ Forever unfinished, _ ” he is declaring, with the air of someone dancing on a grave. He still has not broken from his salute.

She whispers, under her breath, “Oh my God.”

It is - shattered, before her. Torn apart. Water cascades through a chasm; stone gapes bare and exposed where there were paths and homes and memories all built on a name that none of them could define beyond  _ home. _ And it was Wilbur’s, even when someone else had taken it from him, and it was Wilbur’s even as he made a dark ravine his home and his head, and it is Wilbur’s even as he stands in front of her and, at last, breaks his salute. His eyes are wild and glittering with contempt, and she remembers, again,  _ It is only right for a man to die with his country _ -

“Kill me,” Wilbur demands, and Niki’s heart seems to draw to a halt, like curtains closing.

He doesn’t  _ stop. _ “Niki, kill me,” he demands, rapid-fire, as though his words are tripping over each other in their urgency. “Kill me, Niki -  _ kill me, _ ” and as he  _ keeps saying it _ the utter adamance to his voice grows stronger, stronger, even as disbelief yawns wider in Niki’s chest like a chasm. She feels as though her organs are exposed, like bare stone. 

“I’m not gonna do that, Will,” she insists, feeling strangely removed from her own body.

He sniffs, dismissive. “Stab me with the sword,” he demands, and throws his blade at her feet.

Niki takes in the scene: Wilbur, who she could not see needed her until it was too late for L’Manberg. L’Manberg, which she wanted to believe was hers, was more than a fiction Wilbur spun out of ideals borrowed from old stories and the need to be the best. Wilbur, who looks like he has not slept in a year and has not seen the sun in a week, shut away in his dark ravine, muttering to himself.

All at once, she is galvanised.

“I’m not going to  _ do _ that, Will,” she repeats, and this time she looks him in the eye, makes sure he knows she means it. “You’re my best friend. And we can fix this.”

He gives her a stare somewhere between incredulous and disdainful. “It’s beyond repair, Niki.”

“It’s not.”

“Why would you fucking  _ want _ to?”

“Because you blew it up, and people love it.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I  _ made _ them love it,” Wilbur snaps; he sways on his feet, and all at once she realises he is standing at the very edge of the cave’s solid ground, one stumble away from falling into the chasm that was L’Manberg. It’s not far enough to be fatal - she hopes. His hands are moving, and his eyes are faraway, and the wind plucks at his coat like it’s trying to make him a tragic hero. “I’m the fucking bad guy here, Niki, don’t you get that? I’m the liar.  _ I’m the traitor. _ Kill me,” he spits, and steps towards her, looming.

Niki finds that she is not afraid. A step towards her is a step away from the edge, no matter how threatening he intends it. She is Niki Nihachu, and - even when it might be better to - she does not give up on her friends.

“No,” she tells him, and takes another step back.

He follows her, matching her, step for step. “Niki -”

“No, Will.”

“Niki,  _ look, _ ” he snarls, and turns, gesturing, wide and sweeping; figures are gathered on the far edge of the chasm, and she can hear the shouts from here. “How much work went into this and it’s gone, Niki? Do it! They all want you to!”

“I’m not giving up here, Wilbur,” she says, and sheathes his sword. “Not on you.”

“Not on L’Manberg,” Wilbur adds. His lip curls.

“L’Manberg is gone,” Niki says, and sees the way Wilbur falters at that - he blinks, hard, and turns to take in the destruction. When he glances back at her, his eyes are clear but also dry. He won’t weep for it, then, or maybe he has done enough of that already. “I came here for you, Will, just like when I came to L’Manberg. I don’t care about countries; I care about my friend.”

“I’m the villain,” Wilbur insists. 

Niki tilts her head. “I don’t care.”

He tilts towards her, but holds himself back. “L’Manberg was more than just  _ my _ symphony,” he says, fervent, and she isn’t sure which of them he’s trying to convince. “It was a nation. A home. It was more than just my pride grown out of my control -”

“No it wasn’t,” Niki says. “As much as we needed something to be.”

It’s a breakthrough. Sunlight through clouds.

Wilbur stumbles away from the edge, trips, looks up at her with shattered eyes. She opens her arms. He falls into them, a lump of man too tall and lanky for his own good, and with something new blooming in her chest she rubs his back gently, feels him come apart.

“There you go,” she murmurs. She will be angry later, maybe - but there’s peace on the other side of that anger, she knows it. “It’s over.”

“I won,” Wilbur mumbles. She can feel him shaking.

“No, but we take Ls sometimes,” she says, and feels the impossible urge to giggle.

Wilbur draws away; this time he doesn’t shy away from looking her in the eyes, and the anger in his stare has dimmed. Maybe he will be furious later, too. They’ll work it out and get it over with. For now, something is glittering in Wilbur’s eyes - something that isn’t bitterness, or panic, or the light of a man with nowhere to go clinging to the idea of Chekhov’s gun with a white-knuckled grip. It’s sunlight; it’s hope.

“ _ Luh _ Manberg,” Wilbur says, and manages a clear, honest laugh. “God, what a fucking stupid name.”

**Author's Note:**

> please ... if u enjoyed ... consider .... cöment?


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